Yishu is pleased to announce its continued participation in the 41st edition of Art Basel Miami Beach, which opens from December 2-5, 2010. Please come to say hello at Stand M18. See you there!

YISHU ARCHIVE LAUNCH

At the fair, we are also going to launch www.yishu-online.com as our virtual platform for providing immediate access to an authoritative forum for discussion on contemporary Chinese art.

ABOUT ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH

Art Basel Miami Beach is the most important art show in the United States, a cultural and social highlight for the Americas. An exclusive selection of more than 250 leading art galleries from North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa will exhibit 20th and 21st century artworks by over 2,000 artists. The exhibiting galleries are among the world’s most respected art dealers, offering exceptional pieces by both renowned artists and cutting-edge newcomers. Special exhibition sections feature young galleries, performance art, public art projects and video art. The show will be a vital source for art lovers, allowing them to both discover new developments in contemporary art and experience rare museum-calibre artworks.

Open to Public: December 2-5, 2010

Venue: Miami Beach Convention Center

Miami Beach, Florida, USA

http://www.artbaselmiamibeach.com

Yishu is pleased to offer our 7th limited edition print: Zhong Biao’s Dawn of Asia.

Zhong Biao is certainly at the nucleus of the young generation of artists active in China’s dynamic contemporary art scene. He is recognized for his compositions that address notions of time and space and depict the world around us, as well as question the destined nature of things everywhere and the influence of history’s precedence.

Dawn of Asia, a picture within a picture, captures Zhong Biao’s characteristic charcoal renderings, golden frames and fine acrylic embellishments. The framed picture within the picture portrays a herd of expressionless men and women dressed in 1980s-style, wheeling bicycles and walking away from the rays of light in the dawn sky; a young and modern-looking girl peers into the gilded frame and sees herself hurtling above the crowd toward the light as if she perceives hope in the distance. The contrast of a different time and space are brought together and divulge a speechless dialogue.

All editions are USD 400 each, and available only in Vancouver and Beijing. To purchase a Yishu edition print please send your request to Lara Broyde, lara@yishujournal.com or call 1.604.726.5909 (Canada), or contact Katherine Don, Kat@RedBoxStudio.cn or call +86.158.1018.9440 (China). You can also download this PDF order form.

NOTE: Each print is measured 210 by 295 mm, which is the equivalent size of the Journal, and is packaged in a special folder along with a certificate issued by Yishu Journal.

To order other Yishu art edition prints, please visit http://yishu-online.com/yishu-art-editions.

On the occasion of the 2010 Shanghai Biennale’s opening, Zheng Shengtian, the Managing Editor of Yishu visited China again with Kathleen Bartels, the Director of Vancouver art Gallery, Diana Augaitis, Chief Curator, and Hank Bull, the Director of Centre A. The trip was arranged by Yishu and sponsored by Yu Yu who established the Canadian Foundation for Asian Art in Vancouver this year. The group visited many museums and galleries in Shanghai, Hangzhou and Beijing. They also paid studio visits to artists, including Zhang Huan, Song Dong, Qiu Zhijie, and Ai Weiwei.

Editor’s Note:

Yishu 41 begins with essays by the two recipients of the Inaugural Yishu Award for Critical Writing on Contemporary Chinese Art, Maya Kóvskaya and Sheng Wei. Kóvskaya’s text focuses on the work of Han Bing, from Beijing, and Tejal Shah, from Mumbai, and proposes that an expanded notion of the erotic can productively challenge “normative” social and political order and embrace what it means to be truly human. Sheng Wei examines what he sees as critical writing’s ever-increasing loss of voice, a condition which he believes began in the 1980s, and argues for responsibility to history and scholarship rather than to a desire for power in the determination of history.

In discussing two artists from China and India, Kóvskaya’s text anticipates issues posed by other texts and by Expo 2010 in Shanghai, namely, international exchange and China’s cultural and political positioning with respect to other parts of the world. Xhingyu Chen reviews a selection of exhibitions coinciding with Expo 2010, an event intended to showcase China to the world. Defne Ayas and Charles Esche deliberate on some of the challenges of making exchange projects meaningful, in this case focusing on China and the Netherlands in the exhibition Double Infinity. Affiliated with the Double Infinity project is a panel discussion with Hyunjin Kim, Georg Schöllhammer, and Defne Ayas, exploring historical precedents in our understanding of China relative to parallel conditions in Korea, the former Soviet Union, and Turkey. In the past, such discussions have primarily concentrated on China’s associations with the West, but those discussions are now shifting to other parts of the world, including its bordering neighbours.

Continuing with our coverage of Shanghai, Mathieu Borysevicz interviews Cai Guo-Qiang, who curated the exhibition Peasant Da Vincis. Here, a celebration of DIY inventiveness is also a statement about the lack of value placed on the role of peasants and their contribution to Chinese society. Marie Leduc’s interview with Gao Shiming tracks his decade-long curatorial trajectory, leading up to his conceptual approach for the 8th Shanghai Biennale as its Executive Curator.

To conclude, we have three reviews: James Donald examines the curatorial premise of the 17th Sydney Biennale, Stephanie Bailey makes an astute comparison between exhibitions of Yang Fudong and Kostis Velonis in Athens, and Jonathan Goodman explores an important survey of photographs by Mo Yi in Beijing.

Keith Wallace

photo (top): siren eun young jung, The Unexpected Response, 2009, single-channel video, 4 mins., 35 secs. Courtesy of the artist.

Yishu is pleased to launch the September/October 2010 issue, a special edition focussing on off-site art at Taipei Contemporary Art Centre. Editor-in-chief Keith Wallace and guest editor Lu Pei-Yi will discuss how off-site art is practised in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China.

Special Issue: Off-Site Art in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China

Date: September 8 Wed., 7:30-8:30PM

Venue: Taipei Contemporary Art Centre

Speakers: Keith Wallace, Editor-in-chief of Yishu; Lu Pei-Yi, guest editor.

*************************

EDITOR’S NOTE

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Lu Pei-Yi, guest editor of Yishu 40, who proposed developing this special issue on off-site art as it applies to Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China. She has perceptively selected seven texts that explore both the differences and the parallels in off-site art in these regions, and it is clear that the projects discussed emerge from circumstances quite different from those in the West, where off-site art, or what is better known as public art, is more object-oriented and functions in most cases as a form of decoration intended to complement the urban environment. In the Chinese context, and in the texts presented in Yishu 40, there is an interest in process over product; it isn’t the physical artworks that are so important, it is the engagement with the public, especially with those perhaps less familiar with contemporary art. As Lu Pei-Yi notes in her introduction, off-site art in these three regions was formed through resistance to conservative aesthetic values and to an alignment with official state ideology; it responds to political policies, urban development, and gentrification, and explores alternatives to an overwhelmingly market-oriented art system.

photo (top): Wei-Li Yeh, Yang-Ren & Chi-Hung in THTP Garden, 2006, from the THTP Project/Phase Five/Oversight/2008, off-set print, 86 x 112 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

Yishu is pleased to participate in ShContemporary.

ABOUT THE FAIR

The fourth edition of China’s most dynamic art fair will take place from September 9th to 12th at the Shanghai Exhibition Centre. Galleries from Asia, Europe and the US will gather in Shanghai to show their work in the Best of Galleries section.

Discoveries: Re-Value
A thematic exhibition that highlights the confrontation between different ideas of artistic and commercial value. Curators Mami Kataoka, Manray Hsu, and Fair Director Colin Chinnery, have selected work that explores different attitudes towards money, the dichotomy between craftsmanship and the conceptual, and the notion of ‘contemporary’ from different cultural perspectives. This will be an exhibition that asks questions about the way we see and consume contemporary art – to question the nature of the art market within its own commercial context.

Asia Pacific Collector Development Program (CDP)
CDP was initiated in 2009 by ShContemporary to support and inspire an increasing number of new Chinese collectors. CDP operates with partner institutions year-round projects such as the CDP Art Tours to cities around the world, and creates educational resources for emerging collectors both on and off-line. On the occasion of ShContemporary, CDP has extended an invitation to hundreds of international collectors and will be hosting events throughout the fair days. Visit www.shc-cdp.com for more details.

Institutional Collections Forum
Curator and critic Hou Hanru is organizing in co-operation with ShContemporary a special conference entitled “Collecting Asian Contemporary Art: What, When and How?” which examines the future of Asian contemporary art collections in major institutions around the world. The conference will be held on September 9thand includes a panel of top professionals such as the Director of the Musée National de l’Art Modern at Centre Georges Pompidou, Alfred Pacquement; the Deputy Director of MoMA in New York, Kathy Halbreich, Chinese collector Guan Yi and many others.

Beyond the Fair
As China’s largest annual contemporary art event, Shanghai comes alive with special exhibitions and festivities during ShContemporary. During the fair there will be exhibitions in Shanghai by Zeng Fanzhi, Feng Mengbo, Yang Fudong, MadeIn, Yang Zhenzhong, and others, plus thematic shows of Korean, German, and Middle East contemporary art in galleries and museums around town. Two new contemporary art museums have been inaugurated this year alone, with a third to be opened during ShContemporary.

In a larger cultural context, the most ambitious World Expo in history will be open to visitors during ShContemporary. A spectacle of epic proportions, the World Expo provides an opportunity to capture different national, cultural, and corporate visions for the future from a myriad of perspectives.

Dates and Times
Preview (by invitation only): September 8, 5-7PM
Vernissage (by invitation only): September 8, 7– 10PM
VIP days: 9th and 10th September, 11AM – 6PM
Public days: September 11, 11am – 6PM and September 12, 11AM – 5PM

Press Contacts

Press Office – Asia
Sophie Wang

Press Office – Europe, Americas, Middle East
Eva Altosaar

http://www.shcontemporary.info

Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art is pleased to announce the recipients of the Inaugural Yishu Awards for Critical Writing on Contemporary Chinese Art. Two jurors each made an independent selection: Britta Erickson, scholar of Chinese art, selected Maya Kóvskaya; and Gao Minglu, curator and critic of contemporary Chinese art, selected Sheng Wei. The awards carry a value of $5,000 CAD each, and each of the recipients will have a text published in the November/December 2010 issue of Yishu. The Yishu Awards for Critical Writing on Contemporary Chinese Art were established to encourage and recognize writers who are making an outstanding contribution to understanding the history and current issues of contemporary Chinese art.

Maya Kóvskaya is a curator, writer, and independent scholar on contemporary art. In 2009, she received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. She moved to Beijing in 1996 and in 2009 established a second home base in New Delhi. She has curated exhibitions of contemporary Chinese art in Beijing, New Delhi, Houston, Los Angeles, Berkeley, and Toronto. Her writing has appeared in Art Review, Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Art iT, Flash Art, Eyemazing, and positions: east asia cultures critique. Erickson says of Kóvskaya, “Connecting with the underground music and art scene after her arrival in Beijing, Maya Kóvskaya has since emerged as a critic and curator passionately engaged with contemporary Chinese art. While she knows critical theory, she resists the easy allure of flaunting such knowledge for its own sake, applying it in the service of an enhanced understanding of works of art.”

Sheng Wei was born in Chongqing and received his B.A. in art history from the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, his M.A. in critical art history and theory from Tsinghua University, and his Ph.D. in Western modern art study from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Now he is engaged in the artistic study, criticism, and curatorship of modern/contemporary art in both China and the West. He was the editor-in-chief of Art Exit and Muse Art successively and was awarded the Wang Senran Art History Award in 2009. Gao comments, “Sheng Wei is a young critic who has emerged in the past few years, and has been quick to comprehend the contemporary art scene. With a profound knowledge of art history and theory, Sheng has become among the best young critics.”

The award ceremony will take place at the Xi’an Art Museum in Xi’an, China on September 10, 2010, and will be followed by two panel discussions:

CRITICAL STATES: TWO DISCUSSIONS ON ART WRITING

Venue: Xi’an Art Museum, Shaanxi, China
Date: September 10th, 2010

First Panel: What Is Critical Art Writing Today?
Moderator: Keith Wallace, Editor-in-Chief,
Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Vancouver
Panelists: Murtaza Vali, Critic and Art Historian, Sharjah/Brooklyn
Britta Erickson, Curator and Critic, Palo Alto
Ken Lum, Artist and Professor, Vancouver
Maya Kóvskaya, Curator and Critic, New Delhi/Beijing

Second Panel: Critical Art Writing from a Local Perspective
Moderator: Gao Minglu, Curator and Critic, University of Pittsburgh, Beijing/Pittsburgh
Panelists: Yan Shanchun, Director, Shenzhen Painting Academy, Shenzhen
Jason Chia Chi Wang, Curator and Critic, Taipei
Carol Yinghua Lu, Curator and Critic, Beijing
Sheng Wei, Curator and Critic, Beijing/Chongqing

The event is open to public. Please contact Echo Zheng at Xi’an Art Museum for more information or to reserve a seat.

Support for the awards is courtesy of the Canadian Foundation for Asian Art, Stephanie Holmquist and Mark Allison, and Xi’an Art Museum, Shaanxi, China.

Beijing and Shanghai are generally considered the primary centres for contemporary art in mainland China. But there are other cities that have dynamic and distinctive art scenes. Guangzhou is one of them. Several of China’s most significant contemporary artists have emerged from there, but many of them have moved to Beijing, leaving behind something of a cultural void. Yishu 39 includes three texts covering a generation of younger artists and initiatives that are bringing about a renewed interest in this city and region and who are making art that is different from that found further north.

One current that runs through Yishu 39 is of what represents “Chineseness” in contemporary art, a question that is unlikely to reach resolution anytime soon. It is the primary subject of J. P. Park’s essay, in which the more obvious and expected manifestations of what constitutes Chineseness are taken to task with the suggestion that the notion’s parameters require rethinking. Tianyue Jiang’s text on the important Chinese modernist, Lin Fengmian, takes a more historical perspective by examining the influence of Cubism and the inherent Chineseness that remains embedded in his work in spite of his employment of a Western stylistic genre. Natasha Degan’s review of an exhibition by Zhang Enli discusses his recent paintings of mundane objects and scenes that can be found most anywhere in the world and argues that because of their universal iconography, there is nothing recognizably Chinese about his work.

Gu Wenda and Zhang Huan are featured with new work that provides us with an update on two leading artists who are realizing increasingly ambitious projects. Beatrice Leanza and Micki McCoy, with their reviews of two very different kinds of exhibitions, one in Beijing and one in San Francisco, one contemporary and one historical, bring into consideration how curatorial strategies affect the conception and reception of group exhibitions. In November of 2009, the Contemporary Art Academy of China was inaugurated, and many are curious to know more about it and what it means; Christina Yu offers a text on the debates that have emerged around it during the past few months and the impact the Academy may have on contemporary art in China.

Keith Wallace

photo (top): Gu Wenda, china park. it is not just green china, it is china green. Courtesy of the artist.

Yishu is pleased to announce its continued participation in the 41st edition of Art Basel, which opens from June 16-20, 2010.

THE BOOK LAUNCH

In effort to provide timely information about the Chinese art scene, Yishu will distribute at the fair our annual supplement—Yishu Contemporary Chinese Art Guide. As in previous editions, we have collaborated with RedBox Studio in Beijing to produce our pocket-sized supplement. This year we have collected insights from writers in Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, to provide on the ground reports of the different local art scenes in China. Our special focus sections voice the opinions of critics and curators on the state of the art scene in Hong Kong, and provide a perspective on the philosophical intent behind artistic production by the Chinese artist, Zhong Biao.

We sincerely hope you enjoy this supplement to Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art and we are delighted to share our enthusiasm for contemporary Chinese art with you.

YISHU ARCHIVE LAUNCH

At the fair, we are also going to launch www.yishu-online.com as our virtual platform for providing immediate access to an authoritative forum for discussion on contemporary Chinese art.

Please come to say hello at Halle 2.0 / Stand Z17. See you there!

ABOUT ART BASEL

The world’s premier international art show for Modern and contemporary works, Art Basel features nearly 300 leading galleries from North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa. More than 2,500 artists, ranging from the great masters of Modern art to the latest generation of emerging stars, are represented in the show’s multiple sections. The exhibition includes the highest-quality paintings, sculptures, drawings, installations, photographs, video and editioned works.

Open to Public: June 16-20, 2010

Venue: Halls 1 and 2 of Messe Basel,
Messeplatz, 4005 Basel, Switzerland

http://www.artbasel.com

Yishu is pleased to announce its participation at the 3rd edition of ArtHK from May 27-30, 2010.

In effort to provide timely information about the Chinese art scene, Yishu will distribute at the fair our annual supplement—Yishu Contemporary Chinese Art Guide.

In its fifth edition, our 2010 Contemporary Chinese Art Guide continues to be a comprehensive resource for art venues and international events promoting visual arts in and from China. The diversity of China’s art scene is evident in the range of venues and organizations presenting contemporary Chinese art and providing insight to the increasingly global/sophisticated art community both in China and abroad.

As in previous editions, we have collaborated with RedBox Studio in Beijing to produce our pocket-sized supplement. This year we have collected insights from writers in Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, to provide on the ground reports of the different local art scenes in China. Our special focus sections voice the opinions of critics and curators on the state of the art scene in Hong Kong, and provide a perspective on the philosophical intent behind artistic production by the Chinese artist, Zhong Biao.

We sincerely hope you enjoy this supplement to Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art and we are delighted to share our enthusiasm for contemporary Chinese art with you. This summer, we are going to launch www.yishu-online.com as our virtual platform for providing immediate access to an authoritative forum for discussion on contemporary Chinese art.

Thank you for your support, and please visit us at booth no. MED 11.

http://www.hongkongartfair.com